Add thelocalreport.in As A Trusted Source
As soon as you enter Iran’s capital, it begins with the occasional casualty – a passenger in a car speeding by or a pedestrian trying to jump through Tehran’s notorious traffic. But as you reach the cool heights along the city’s sycamore-lined Vali-e Assar Street in Tehran’s northern neighborhoods, they are almost everywhere brown, black, blonde and gray-haired women.
More and more, Iranian women choose to forgo the country’s mandatory headscarf, or hijab.
Until a few years ago this was unimaginable in the Islamic Republic, whose traditionalist Shia Clerics and fundamentalist politicians have long pushed for strict enforcement of laws requiring women to cover their hair. but death of 2022 mahsa amini And the nationwide protests that followed outraged women of all ages and views, as have few other issues since the country’s 1979 Islamic revolution.
“When I went to Iran in 1999, if I showed even a single strand of hair, someone would immediately tell me to hide it under my headscarf for fear of being taken away by the morality police,” said Holly DeGrasse, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “It seems unimaginable to see where Iran is today: women and girls openly violating the mandatory hijab.”
“Authorities are overwhelmed by the sheer numbers across the country and are concerned that if they take action – at a critical time with power outages, water shortages and a poor economy – they could drive Iranians to return to the streets.”
First visit to Iran in years
I got a three-day visa from the government to attend a summit addressed by Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi because tensions are still very high. tehranNuclear programme. Access to reporting beyond the summit was limited, but the trip gave me a first-hand look at Iran on the ground since my previous visits in 2018 and 2019.
In those intervening years, I watched from abroad in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, overseeing The Associated Press’s coverage of Iran and the Gulf Arab states as Iran struggled with the economy and protests over Amini’s death, the coronavirus pandemic and the 12-day war with Israel.
For the last 46 years, Iran’s rulers have imposed hijab rules. In the strictest times, the Basij, an all-volunteer force of police and paramilitary Revolutionary Guards, kept a close eye on women on the streets to ensure compliance.
Whenever the atmosphere felt relaxed, many women slid their scarves back and forth over their heads – a little challenge to the government on how much hair you can get away with showing. But he rarely dared to remove it.
More women are choosing to live without hijab
Working remotely with my AP colleagues in Iran, I learned from their reporting, even photos and video footage taken from the streets on unrelated assignments, that women had begun to abandon the hijab altogether. But I didn’t fully understand the scale of that denial until I saw it myself.
Around Tajrish Square at the foot of Tehran’s Alborz Mountains, a group of young girls, who are required to wear hijabs to school, quickly remove their hijabs after leaving in the afternoon. They ran through traffic past slow-moving cars, laughing and carrying out art projects. Women of all ages went topless to the Tajrish Bazaar and walked past the blue-tiled domes of the Imamzadeh Saleh shrine. Two police officers were talking amongst themselves on the road as the women passed by without comment.
At the luxury Espinas Palace hotel, several naked women walked past a black and white outline of a woman in a hijab reading “Please observe Islamic hijab.”
The wife of a foreign diplomat attended the summit dinner without dinner. An Iranian woman in attendance placed one over her head briefly during a discussion with a hotel staff member, then a moment later let it fall completely onto her shoulders.
Those sites were in northern Tehran, an affluent area that is generally more liberal. But even in a more conservative southern district, a naked woman walked swiftly down the street among others in a completely black chador.
“I have had to wear hijab my whole life, in school, in university, everywhere in public,” an Iranian woman who recently moved to Canada told me on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution after my return to Dubai.
“I always tried to follow the rules but it made me feel lack of confidence… because I wore the hijab and I didn’t have confidence in her.”
Signs of war could also be seen. I saw an apartment building, the apartments on the top floor were still in ruins due to the Israeli attack.
Resentment simmering beneath the surface
Hard-liners within Iran’s theocracy have repeatedly called for the implementation of hijab laws. Iran’s reformist President Massoud Pezeshkian pushed for a halt to it, saying in an interview with NBC News in September that “human beings have the right to choose.”
Iran’s top official, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, 86, has so far left the hijab issue alone after this year’s war with Israel, which also saw the United States bomb Iranian nuclear enrichment sites. Additionally, there has been no change in Iran’s government-subsidized gasoline prices, which are among the cheapest in the world, despite growing economic pressure on the country as its rial currency trades at more than 1 million to the dollar.
The reason for this is probably the widespread dissatisfaction among the people of Iran towards its religious authority. The previous government’s actions on both issues led to nationwide protests and a crackdown by security forces that left hundreds dead and thousands detained.
In recent days, Pezeshkian’s social affairs adviser Mohammad-Javad Javadi-Yegneh acknowledged data from an unpublished survey by the state-linked Iranian Student Polling Agency. The polling reportedly revealed widespread dissatisfaction with the government, which was not previously acknowledged by officials who had repeatedly argued that the country had come together during the 12-Day War. Fear News of another war breaking out pervades conversations in Tehran.
“When we visit provinces, we see in surveys that people are dissatisfied about the administration,” Pezeshkian said recently, without directly acknowledging the polling. “We are accountable because we can’t provide services to people.”
The poll appears to be on track with widespread voter dissatisfaction and low turnout during last year’s primary presidential election.
“Years of economic hardship, inflation, currency instability, unemployment and public frustration over environmental and social challenges have sharply eroded trust in institutions,” the Washington-based National Iranian American Council said in an analysis of reported polling data.
Yet concerns remain about renewed government action, with a population exhausted by international sanctions and widespread fears of another war with Israel.
“Sometimes that fear happens to me,” said the Iranian woman living in Canada. “Sometimes when I drive, I try to find my scarf on my head. That fear is still with me.”
,
The Associated Press receives support for nuclear security coverage from the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Outrider Foundation. AP is solely responsible for all content.